Studio Server full installation

This article describes the installation of Studio Server on a system on which it is not yet installed.

Info: The described steps can only be performed on the on-premise version of Studio Server, not on the cloud version.

Before you start

Before starting the installation, make a plan of what is needed: which features of Studio Server and its clients do you want to make use of and which additional (third-party) software does this require?

As a starting point, use the Compatibility Matrix to verify which software versions you need and if any upgrades are required.

Important: Use of WAMP or LAMP not supportedWAMP and LAMP are single-distribution packages for Windows and Linux that combine the installation of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. These make them potentially ideal for quickly setting up a new Studio Server environment. However, such packages are meant for development purposes and are not to be used in live production environments.The use of WAMP or LAMP for installing a Studio Server environment is therefore not supported.

Upgrading InDesign and InCopy

When you are upgrading to a new version of Adobe InDesign or InCopy, keep the following in mind:

All InDesign and InCopy users should use the same Adobe version. This is because documents created in a newer version cannot be opened in a previous version.

Convert any InDesign and InCopy templates to the new version of InDesign and InCopy. Do this by opening the file and re-saving it.

Step 1. Setting up the database

Install and set up the database for storing all Studio Server related data.

Step 3. Configuring the Web Server

Please take note of the following information, depending on the Web Server used.

Apache

To manually configure the Apache configuration files for PHP, edit conf/httpd.conf to enable PHP support in both the Load Module list and Add Module list.

Some Apache installations overrule the character set of HTML pages. As a result, accented characters are not displayed correctly by the Studio Server Maintenance applications. This can be fixed by changing or adding AddDefaultCharSet in the Apache configuration file conf/httpd.conf to:

AddDefaultCharSet UTF-8

–or–

AddDefaultCharSet off

Also set the DefaultType to:

DefaultType text/html

Note: The default Web page for Studio Server should be index.htm. However, for Apache it can be index.php as well in which case the Studio Server logon page remains empty. To avoid this problem, make sure the index.htm file is listed above the index.php file in the httpd configuration file.

Microsoft IIS

It is recommended to increase the maximum size that IIS allows for uploads. This is done by changing the 'Maximum allowed content length' setting.

Note: Reaching the limit can result in errors such as 'HTTP error 413' when for example a user tries to save a file to the database.

Step 4. (Optional) Configuring the ExifTool

When images are uploaded, Studio Server extracts metadata. This metadata is used for populating basic metadata fields (such as author, credit, format, and so on), as well as specific fields such as width and orientation (used for cropping images).

The ExifTool is part of the Studio Server installation and can optionally be configured.

(Optional) Configuration

The order in which image properties are resolved can be based on the metadata containers (such as 'Exif', 'XMP', an 'IPTC') that are extracted by the ExifTool application.

Different metadata containers can contain different values for the same image attribute.

Example: 'Credit' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ] means that first the 'IPTC' metadata container is used to resolve the 'Credit' attribute. If this gives a result, the 'XMP' container is ignored. Only in case of no result is the 'XMP' container used.

The location is dependent on the system and HTTP Server used (Apache/IIS), but should normally be in the following location:

Windows: c:\inetpub\wwwroot

Linux: /var/www/html

Step 4. Create a folder named FileStore and apply access rights.

Note: The default location for the FileStore folder is as follows:

Linux: /FileStore

Windows: c:\FileStore

This is not a location we advise to use for production systems; it has just been chosen to allow easy initial installation. The location can always be changed at a later stage (but note that the whole directory also has to be copied to the new location).

Make sure that read and write access is set for the following users:

Windows: “IUSR_<servername>”

Linux: “nobody”

Tip: A typical setup would be to create a root FileStore and create the other directories in it.

Step 5. Verify the following options in the configserver.php file or the config.php file (recommended: config_overrule.php file):

1 The DBUSER is the single database user that is used by the application server to access the database. This database user account needs SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE privileges, plus ALTER TABLE privileges for the creation and deletion of custom properties. The application server itself authorizes all requests for the user logged on via the Studio Server user tables which are completely separate from the database users. Default is ‘root’. For MSSQL Server you could use ‘sa’ as default.

Configure the web access using the following options:

Option

File

BASEDIR

config.php

INETROOT

config.php

Configure file access using the following options:

Option

File

ATTACHMENTDIRECTORY

config.php

WOODWINGSYSTEMDIRECTORY

config.php

TEMPDIRECTORY

config.php

EXPORTDIRECTORY

config.php

Configure the path to the ExifTool using the following option:

Option

File

EXIFTOOL_APP_PATH

configserver.php

Step 6. Installing ionCube loaders

For security reasons, Studio Server uses ionCube to encrypt some of its PHP modules.

The process of checking the currently installed version of ionCube and guiding you through any upgrade steps is built in to Studio Server.

Step 1. Try accessing the Studio Server Health Check page by entering the following URL in a Web browser:

http://<your server URL>/StudioServer/server/wwtest

Example: http://localhost/StudioServer/server/wwtest

The installation of ionCube is automatically tested. During this process, you might see various progress bars appear. Depending on the result of the test, the following will happen:

The Health Check page appears. This means that ionCube Loader is correctly installed. No further action is required.

The ionCube Loader Wizard for Studio Server appears. This means that the ionCube Loader is not correctly installed or that an incorrect version is installed. The information provided on the page will give you an indication of the exact problem and how to resolve it.

Step 2. Repeat step 1 until the Health Check page appears. This is an indication that ionCube is correctly installed.

Step 1a. In Studio Server, click Advanced in the Maintenance menu or on the Home page. A page with all advanced Maintenance features appears.

Step 1b. Click Health Check. The Health Check page appears.

Step 2. At the bottom of the page, click Clear All.

Step 3. Only select the Database Connection test.

Step 4. Click Test.

The test is executed and the result is displayed next to the test. It should display “OK”.

Note: If the test fails, an error is displayed together with instructions for solving it. Follow the instructions and then run the test once more.

Step 9. Activating licenses

In order to complete the setup process of Studio Server, its license needs to be activated first. This allows you to access the Maintenance pages of Studio Server and allows users of client applications to log in to the Server. At this time, you might also want to activate all client applications.

Step 1a. In Studio Server, click Advanced in the Maintenance menu or on the Home page. A page with all advanced Maintenance features appears.

Step 1b. Click Health Check. The Health Check page appears.

Step 2. (Optional) In case not all licenses are activated yet, clear the check box for Licenses.

Step 3. (Optional) For those systems or features which are not installed yet (such as LDAP), clear their check boxes.

Step 4. Click Test.

The test(s) are executed and the results are displayed next to each test. They should all display “OK”.

Note: If a test fails, an error is displayed together with instructions for solving it. Follow the instructions and then run the test once more.

Step 12. Integrating Apache Solr

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library and is integrated by Studio Server to speed up the searching process and to implement the faceted search feature.

Solr runs in a Java servlet container such as Tomcat or Jetty (included in the Solr distribution download).

Step 13. Configuring Studio Server

During the installation of Studio Server, the system was set up using default settings for use in a generic production environment. However, many more powerful features can be unlocked, mainly by making further changes to the configuration files, but also by making use of other technologies and third-party applications.

For an overview of the options that can be configured, use the following sources:

Step 18. Connecting to WoodWing Cloud Services

Note: This step is mandatory when Studio Server is used in combination with working with Digital articles in Studio.

The Digital articles that are created in Studio make use of various resources such as Component Sets, styles, custom swatches, and so on. These resources are stored in a central location in the cloud in a system named WoodWing Cloud Services.

Studio needs access to these resources so that users can do the following: